Word: batted
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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After 15 years in the business, nothing fazes Phelps. She wouldn't bat an eyelash if someone asked for a remote control vibrator or an electric cattle prod. In fact, a lot of people have been asking for these two products lately, Phelps says...
...turns out that the savants had a lot to learn about retrograde, reprobate rock 'n' roll. Bat II slipped through a crack in the pop zeitgeist to occupy the No. 1 slot on Billboard's album chart, above Nirvana and the other pricey rockers half Meat Loaf's age (46). Somebody in the U.S. must like this stuff, someone who remembers what rock once did -- and still could -- sound and feel like. Three, maybe four chords; an amoral homily twisted into a catchphrase; adolescent yearning and ecstasy so confused that they become harmony...
...right, nobody is young anymore -- certainly not kids. And the speaker of Bat II's songs is a bit frayed by time. In I'd Do Anything for Love (but I Won't Do That), it's the woman whose long wish list needs to be satisfied and the man who must oblige. He must also face mortality. In Objects in the Rear View Mirror May Appear Closer Than They Are, he is haunted by three pushy ghosts: a friend, a father, a long lost love. The only substance this fellow abuses is beer; now he prays...
Anachronistic? Defiantly. The blood on these guitars is Chuck Berry red. The production reverbs with the heavenly choirs, sleigh bells and mausoleum echoes of Phil Spector's wailing Wall of Sound. The lyric lines are long and chatty, with more pomp to the bomp. Bat II is the '50s, '60s and '70s, packed in steel and wrapped in Mylar. Or go back even further. Meat Loaf is not quite Jussi Bjorling, and Steinman ain't no Wagner, but in rock terms Bat Out of Hell II is a Gotterdammerung you can dance...
REPETITION IS HONORED AS A necessary principle in the music of Bach, the spin of prayer wheels and the effective swinging of a baseball bat over the long season and into the play-offs, but not in the matter of cop-and-crime stories. This is unfair. "You're reading another one of his?" the addict's spouse derides, leaving unspoken the remainder of the gibe ("rather than learning Italian or visiting the aged...